Great News From Verizon?
September 23rd, 2009 by ComputerBob
I’ve been using a cell phone for about 4 years — ever since my aunt gave me one that she no longer needed.
It was a SimpleFreedom prepaid phone. I added $20 worth of time to my account balance every 60 days, and all calls — local and long-distance — slowly chipped away at that balance at the rate of 15 cents per minute, without any additional fees or contracts. And as long as I added another $20 to my balance before the end of the 60 days, all of my unused minutes rolled over into the next 60-day period.
I didn’t use a cell phone very often, but it was worth it to me to pay $10 per month to be able to have one whenever I needed it.
When SimpleFreedom somehow became part of Alltel. I didn’t notice any difference at all in my service, but I continued to pay 15 cents per minute for all of my cell calls.
But yesterday, I received a letter and a brochure from Verizon, announcing the “great news” that my formerly SimpleFreedom, currently Alltel prepaid phone is going to become a Verizon phone in the near future.
As I read through the brochure I discovered that the “great news” isn’t for me.
It’s for Verizon.
Because, unlike SimpleFreedom and Alltel, Verizon is going to charge me 25 cents per minute for all calls.
That’s a whopping 67% increase.
Of course, Verizon also offers the option of paying $30 per month for its cheapest “unlimited” calling plan — which would still charge me 10 cents per minute for night an weekend calls. The next-cheapest “unlimited” plan would cost $60 per month — and would still charge me 5 cents per minute for most of the calls that I make.
But I’m not interested in paying 25 cents per minute, and there’s no way that I would choose to pay a minimum of more than three times the $10 per month that I had been paying, just to get Verizon’s cheapest pseudo-unlimited plan.
So I tried to call Verizon, to complain about it. There are many phone numbers sprinkled throughout the brochure, to make it easy for people to order new Verizon services, but when I finally found and called the only “customer service” number in the entire brochure, its robotic phone system asked me for my cell phone number, told me that it had no record of me being a customer yet, and then hung up on me without ever giving me any opportunity to speak to a human being.
This whole story is just one more example of the legendary Verizon corporate greed and self-serving customer service that I’ve known and hated for the past several years.
So thanks for the great news, Verizon.
And now, I have some great news, too.
Although I like the convenience of having a cell phone, I’ve decided that once I use up the remaining time on mine, I’m going to stop using it.
It just isn’t worth it to me any more.
Can you hear me, now, Verizon?
No, of course you can’t.
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Consumer Info, Dubious, Funny, Personal